Cressida Dick (Part One)

Bad Gays

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

History

4.5 • 934 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much in the news. Until last week, she was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, and was the first woman and the first LBGTQ person to hold the rank, Dame Cressida Dick. Today, part one of two: we begin telling Dick's life story and then delve into the history of the Met, its relationship with LGBTQ people, and the conflicting strands of LGBTQ politics that emphasize conflict vs collaboration with the police. Next week: more on Dick herself and her checkered career in the force. ----more---- SOURCES: Many of the sources we used to research this episode will be cited in next week's show notes. For this week: Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006 Moya Lothian-Maclean, “Lords of the Manor,” Human Resources, accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/human-resources/id1565249472. Asa Seresin, “Lesbian Fascism on TERF Island,” Asa Seresin (blog), February 11, 2021, https://asaseresin.com/2021/02/11/lesbian-fascism-on-terf-island/ “‎Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder,” accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/untold-the-daniel-morgan-murder/id1114802610. We also encourage people listening to this episode to learn more about organizations combating police violence. Here are four organizations in the UK related to this episode - next week we will add more resources to the show notes with similar groups in the other areas where we have the highest listenership: London Campaign against Police and State Violence http://lcapsv.net/ United Friends and Families Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/ Sisters Uncut https://www.sistersuncut.org/ Inquest - a charity that focuses on getting truth and accountability for state related deaths https://www.inquest.org.uk/ Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, everybody, and welcome to season two episode eight of bad gays, a podcast about evil and complicated
0:22.3	queers in history. I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, and member of the board of the Shulis
0:26.9	Museum in Berlin. And my name's Hugh Lemmy. I'm a writer and author. Last week, we talked about
0:33.1	Freddie Mercury, the rock star at the head of Queen who managed to be about seven different
0:39.3	incredibly fabulous kinds of gay men all wrapped up in one. Who are we talking about this week
0:46.2	on the show, Hugh? And we do have two episodes in a row from you, but we couldn't resist this topic
0:50.9	for this week because it's ripped from the headlines, as I understand.
1:00.3	Yeah, right. Yeah, and usually for the show, yeah, which normally we focus on often long-departed historical figures.
1:03.4	Today we're going to talk about someone who's still very much in the news.
1:08.7	The woman who was until last week, if you are listening to this episode when it comes out,
1:10.9	the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,
1:16.8	London's Police Force, and who was the first woman and the first LGBT person to hold the rank,
1:18.3	Dame Cressida Dick.
1:24.7	What Gay Liberation was calling for all those years. More gay cops. More gay cops.
1:28.1	Well, this is perhaps what we'll focus on. And also actually, unusually, as we really want to cover this story properly and to go into some depth, both about the Met Police and Crescededic herself, we've decided to make this profile of her a two-parter.
1:42.0	So today we'll discuss some history of the Met and its relationship with
1:45.8	LGBTQ people especially. And then you can join us next week as we're going to more depth on
1:51.3	Krista Dick's very checkered career in the police force. But before we start, a few notes about the
1:57.2	contents of this episode. First of all, as we're dealing with the recent history
2:01.1	of the Metropolitan Police, I would advise that on this show we'll be discussing
2:04.7	police brutality, racism, sexual violence, harassment, extreme misogyny, and homophobia,
2:13.3	and sometimes in very graphic terms when that's necessary.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.